Ernst: She's studied red tide so much, they named it after her

Karen Steidinger has a lot more help these days studying the toxic algae.

Eric Ernst

Red tide research has come a long way since Karen Steidinger used to retrieve harmful algal bloom samples from a bucket lowered into the water from a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter.

Then again, Steidinger has been studying dinoflagellates through a microscope for close to 50 years, most recently at the marine lab of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in St. Petersburg.

She'd expect changes. On Monday morning, she talked about a few of them at the Hyatt Regency in Sarasota, where she opened a four-day symposium for 215 harmful algae researchers from 31 states.

That's one change right there. The field has grown.

The blooms, which are really population explosions of microscopic organisms, have become more widely distributed and more frequent worldwide, Steidinger said. Because their toxins often kill fish and other animals, pose a health threat to humans, and put a crimp in tourism, the effort to control and predict the outbreaks has freed up money for research.

From the looks of it, the presenters have been at it with a vengeance. For instance, Charles Tilney and Mark Warner of the University of Delaware have written “Comparing the diel vertical migrations of sympatric Karlodinium veneficum (Dinophyceae) and Chattonella subsalsa (Raphidophyceae) in laboratory columns.”

Meanwhile, a group of California scientists have found that a “Transcriptome analysis of the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia australis reveals pathways associated with domoic acid biosynthesis.”

It's just a rumor that Disney is going after the movie rights.

And for those who like polls, a University of Kentucky researcher, employing state of the art methodology, has determined that people (with asthma or without it) are much less likely to go to the beach if it stinks and dead fish are lying around. Note to tourist areas: Clean up the fish.

Seriously folks, the symposium does show that some great minds are working on a vexing problem with at least three questions: What is the nature of these microorganisms? What causes them to erupt and release poisons? And what, if anything, can we do to predict or control them?

Practically speaking, all the studies conducted so far haven't advanced us too much further than the native Americans in the 1600s, who concluded, “Don't eat the fish when the water's glowing.”

Researchers learn more about dinoflagellates every day, but, as Steidinger observed, “What happens is you study a question, that leads to other answers, that leads to other questions.” The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

Science often advances slowly and cautiously, and for good reason in this case. Faulty conclusions could lead to poor resource management decisions.

For instance, Steidinger says today's researchers have split DNA to realize that more than one species of algae causes the toxic blooms experienced worldwide. In Southwest Florida, it's most likely Karenia brevis, the genus named for Steidinger. Each species releases its own toxin, which has unique characteristics and effects.

Researchers also now recognize the complicated life cycle of dinoflagellates, some of which can go dormant for a hundred years, then burst from the sediment in a population explosion, triggered by who knows what, to poison the water.

Nutrients (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus), the currents, the temperature and any host of factors, including interaction of one species with another, can influence a bloom.

Two areas of measurable progress have come in identification and reporting. Satellite imagery has helped define the boundaries of the worst blooms. And sites such as Mote Marine Laboratory's “beach condition report” can identify where red tide has hit and, equally important, where it hasn't.

Meanwhile, scientists continue to manipulate the variables to pinpoint how it all fits together. The symposium, sponsored by Mote and the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, plays a role in that effort.

“Scientists are human beings, too,” says Dennis McGillicuddy, a researcher with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and one of the symposium's organizers. “We need to get together and talk with each other. A question might make me think differently about my data.”

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